Exhibition Road Drawing Resident: Liam O’Connor

April 2014 – April 2015

The Exhibition Road building project will be taking place over the next three years at the V&A, with the aim of building a new exhibitions gallery, opening in 2017. As part of the project, we will have a series of three year-long, part-time residencies that will respond to and document the various stages of the build. The first in this series is a Drawing Resident, Liam O’Connor, who will be based in a studio at the Museum for a year, on a part-time basis, from April 2014.

Liam's work explores the rituals, patterns and the accumulation of time that bind us to a place in physical and imagined ways. Drawing is at the core of this; it has always provided a space for contemplation and experimentation that creates a richer understanding of the world.

Liam studied at both London College of Communication and the Royal College of Art. He has recently been the artist in residence at the British Museum where he also worked on creating work inspired by a building site.

Building Site

The building site is an island within the city, a territory relinquished in one form waiting to be claimed by another. Hoardings form a physical boundary, we are asked to look the other way until the building is complete, but what is taking place within this environment is extraordinary. It reveals the transformative nature of our cities.

Drawing

Once you have spent a lot of time drawing, everything becomes a drawing. I am really interested in finding drawings in the landscape, where a process or an object has made or left an image of itself, these images/objects always speak of both a presence and an absence.

My residency

My aim with the residency
is to create work that is informed by both the building site and the
V&A. The plaster cast collection is one area where I feel the
two cultures can meet.

A lot of my drawings are
made from direct readings of objects or surfaces through rubbings,
prints and photograms. I am interested in further developing ideas of
facsimile in my work in response to this collection.

The building site is an architectural performance evolving through many forms on its journey to the completed structure. I am interested in capturing this fleeting or fragmentary architecture that becomes inaccessible over time. The origin of the plaster cast collection, as an educational tool, capturing pieces of architecture that were inaccessible by geography, provides a really interesting place to start.

Links

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